Page 72 of What Change Entails

Miss Bingley’s arrival had altered everything. Meals became performances. Conversations acquired edges. Rooms that had been satisfying the day before now required navigation. Miss Bingley placed herself beside Georgiana, spoke too often to Elizabeth with studied civility, and found reasons to address Darcy whenever he had succeeded in speaking to anyone else.

Still, mornings remained partly his.

Miss Bingley did not rise early unless society demanded witnesses. Elizabeth did. So did Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, and occasionally Lydia if bribed by breakfast cakes or provoked by Georgiana. Darcy had therefore contrived, without appearing to contrive anything at all, to walk before breakfast on three consecutive mornings.

The first morning, he and Elizabeth had spoken of Lambton.

The second of books.

This morning, they had spoken of nothing remarkable. A fallen branch near the path. The color of the hills after rain. Horace’s habit of stealing gloves and burying them beneath the laurel hedge. Ordinary things.

It had been dangerous. Not because conversation had been intense. Quite the reverse. Elizabeth walking beside him in the early light, her bonnet ribbons stirred by the breeze and her wit sharpened by sleepiness, had disordered him more thoroughly than argument ever had. He could guard himself against reproach. He had no defense at all against her laughing at Horace’s crimes.

Her presence was intoxication.

He disliked the word even as it formed in his mind. It suggested excess, weakness, a surrender of judgment. There was no better one. Elizabeth did not soothe him. She enlivened every faculty and unsettled each one. When she spoke, he listened too closely. When she was silent, he worked to understand why. Whenever distance came between them, he remembered absurd details: the curve of her glove around a book, the mud on the edge of her hem after walking, the way she studied Pemberley with admiration she tried not to betray.

And Miss Bingley interrupted whenever possible.

“Mr. Darcy,” Lydia said loudly, dragging his attention back to the stream, “you are not instructing. You are standing there looking solemn.”

Elizabeth looked away, but not before he caught her smile.

Darcy adjusted his grip on the second rod. “Forgive me. I was gathering patience.”

Lydia gave him a suspicious look. “For me?”

“For fishing.”

“That is worse. Fishing has done nothing to deserve it.”

Georgiana stood a few paces away with Horace’s leash looped around her wrist. She had been smiling all morning, even after Miss Bingley had pronounced outdoor amusements “charming in theory” and taken a seat in the shade with Mrs. Hurst. Darcy had rarely seen his sister so unguarded before guests. Lydia was responsible for a great deal of it.

That admission still surprised him.

He had once thought little of the youngest Bennet sisters, and what he had thought had not been kind. They had appeared noisy, unchecked, and determined to expose every weakness in their family’s education. Lydia especially had been a creature made entirely of laughter, ribbons, and flirtation, or so he had thought.

He had not been wrong about the noise. He had been wrong about its meaning.

Lydia was reckless, certainly. She spoke before thought had put on shoes and she adored admiration far too much. She treated rules as personal inconveniences and had no reverence for rank unless rank arrived attached to an interesting house, a handsome man, or a superior bonnet.

Still, she noticed what many better-trained people missed and when Georgiana withdrew.

She noted when Miss Bingley’s civility carried a barb and Elizabeth’s discomfort and resented it on her behalf even while continuing to blame Elizabeth for the loss of Brighton. She had defended Georgiana in ridiculous ways, improper ways, often inconvenient ways, but the defense was real.

Lydia Bennet was not a well-regulated young lady.

She was worth knowing.

The thought would have astonished him months ago. Now he watched her squint at the water with her bonnet slipping toward one eye and found himself wanting, against all reason, for her to succeed.

“You must draw the line back first,” Darcy said, moving beside her. “Not so far. Your wrist, Miss Lydia, not your whole shoulder.”

Lydia attempted to obey.

The hook flew backward into a bush.

Bingley applauded. “Excellent spirit!”